Transcription
Let's kick off with a few of these very popular questions. Um, so you've you've spoken at length about science and faith this evening, but one of the most popular questions here is: Do you think there could be other forms of life in the universe? And I suppose I would like to ask, and if there were, would it matter?
I was asked this at a launch of a book by Professor Paul Davis, a physicist. His book is called *Are We Alone?* and I was interviewed, I was being interviewed by a certain station called Premier Christian radio. I don't know whether you remember. I remember the interview well; it was one of the first times I'd had you on the show, and I brought you on with with Paul Davis.
That's right. And Paul Davis said, as a scientist, he thought that we weren't alone, but as a person, he hoped we weren't alone. And then I was asked, uh, did I believe that there were other intelligences in the universe? I said yes, and one very big one called God. And quite seriously, from a Christian perspective, there are other intelligences in the universe; of course, there are. And God is the greatest one, but there are others because we are told that there are beings in some sense above us. The Bible calls them spirit beings; they're not uh, made of matter as we understand it—angels and so on. So there are others. This whole universe is much more comple complex than we think, and our vision, we don't see everything. So I think there are, and it does matter infinitely because if we were the only intelligences around, we'd be left uh, with the question as to where we come from, but because we know about God, then we've got a huge answer to that question. Thank you so much.
From the sublime to the almost ridiculous, um, in this question, there are lots of theories in our internet age, um, floating around. And interestingly, one of the ones that has sort of had a bizarre revival is the idea that we're living on a flat Earth. And and someone, and this has been, this is the most popular question according to the likes, what do you think about the Flat Earth debate, John? Nothing at all, really. I I mean, but in all seriousness, there's, it for me, it's it's a sign of the fact we live in an age where almost anything can get air time these days. And that's true. Was the C.S. Chesterton say that if people reject God, they don't believe in nothing; they end up believing in anything. And and it just shows there's masses of ridiculous things that people believe, and that is the thing that staggers me. Taking the question seriously, they will believe that kind of thing for which the evidence is all contrary. And yet, when it comes to seriously set forward uh, arguments and reasons for believing in God, they won't even listen to them. There's a double think, and I would go as far as to say that there's a reason for it—a very interesting statement that Paul made that the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe. That there is an enemy who sets the thought forms of the world. And Paul analyzes the intellectual darkness that comes about in Romans when people reject God; they end up worshipping stones and inanimate things; they ascribe creator power to nature because they don't believe in God. And some of it is utterly absurd, and yet that is what happens, and I would describe it as intellectual darkness, but there's an enemy behind it. Thank you.
This is a very popular question: What do you think, why do you think Christianity is on the decline in Europe, especially amongst young people? That's very complex. I think historically, you you're probably better positioned to answer that than I am. There are roots in history going back to the Enlightenment; the the the evils perpetuated by some professing branches of the Christian church have died hard. The fact that in the whole EU Constitution the word God is not mentioned at all; the fact that our major institutions are all of them virtually, as Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson and other people are pointing out, are all traceable back to scripture, yet that's brushed out of history, so that we are educating young people—we're in that sense brainwashing them and not telling them the facts—so that they just don't know. And it's not surprising. You see, let me put it very crudely: If you tell people constantly, young people, that there's no meaning in life, they are simply animals—moderately sophisticated animals—they'll end up believing you, and therefore their behavior will not be governed by any sense of morality. And it it is frightening to read things like this: A class of students asked this, um, give an example of a moral dilemma; answer: What is a moral dilemma? We are in serious trouble, folks, but I'm glad you said in Europe because there are other parts of the world where Christianity is growing and thriving, and they are often the parts where there's been much more persecution. And somebody pointed out to me the other day, if you take the whole of the Bible, how much of it was written at a time when there was no persecution and trouble? Very little. And we have had an experience in Europe, at least until relatively recently, without war for an unusual period of time. And unfortunately, into the vacuum there has poured all this kind of uh, stuff—postmodernism, atheism, all the rest of it—and it has had an effect in our society. But please feel free to add to that, Justin, because from your perspective, I I I wouldn't disagree with anything that that you've said there, John.
I I think that we are living in the wake, if you like, of many different forces that have led to the the way in which religion is now seen as a a private hobby almost. And to that extent, it's part of the the fact that our cultures are increasingly mobile, fluid; many community institutions have broken down because of the the focus on individualism in our culture. And so there, I think there's a lot of things, and alongside that goes obviously the this materialism, this this story of materialism that obviously convinces people without good foundation that that there is no God and so on. I think I'm encouraged, and part of the the story I tell in in my new book is that actually people can only live on those those thin versions of reality for so long though, until actually people do start to come back and ask, is this the way life is meant to be lived? And and I'm encouraged actually that I see a lot of young people, almost as we reach a point where there's almost no familiarity with the Christian story. One of the the good things about that is that you don't have the the assumption that you know what it is, uh, and and it's sometimes it's actually easier to start telling people what it is when they don't know anything about it rather than those who who think they know what it is but actually have a rather a false false idea of it in their head. So I think I think we should we should be encouraged.
I mean, let me skip to this question since we're talking about this, and this is obviously, um, you know, a lot of people here from the Romanian diaspora, and someone asked, what is your advice for the Romanian community, specifically the Christian Romanian community, for improving the belief climate in the UK? Any any thoughts on that, John? Well, I have had the privilege of being in Romania several times. The first time I went, I was poisoned deliberately by the secret police, and it wow, it nearly killed me. Gosh. And I looked back to that, and the Lord preserved me because I went to visit some marvelous Christians there. But I've been back since, and they don't feed you poison anymore, and they don't have the poison, I think I could say, but you need to ask Samuel about that. They haven't been infected by all the poisons of atheism that we have in the west. So I I think you've got, and what I saw at my brief visits, you got much more sense of togetherness as Christians. Well, let's ask a Romanian. Yes, I think Samuel needs to. You' probably be very well positioned to to this question of how how how Ro the Romanian Christian Community can specifically encourage belief in in in the west.
Well, I think the Romanian diaspora community is very strong here in London and in the UK. There are many Evangelical churches in London, and I think one of the reasons that Romanians believe in God and keep their faith, although they they live in a very secularized society and culture, is because of Communism. And communism promoted atheism as the national ideology, and Romanians have lived this uh, for several decades and experienced what that means, and it simply doesn't work. So that's one of the reasons that Romanians and Eastern Europe in general remained a very religious society; it still is. And I think Romanians and other international diaspora communities, such as this, the Polish diaspora community, for example, can and may indeed um uh, revive Christianity and bring a new new energy in terms of living faith in a secular culture as the UK. I think that's absolutely true. And I spent many years—I started going to Eastern Europe in 1976 and traveled many times, particularly to Hungary, Poland, and above all East Germany—and I came to the conclusion that many of our modern mod day so-called new atheists or P have not got a clue about what atheism does to a culture. And as Romanians, you know, and because you know, you can be a force for enormous good in our society. When people start talking about these things, you could just say, just wait a minute, let me tell you what it was like to live under the Securitate and the secret police. And I saw this again and again in East Germany, which was almost Stalinist, and I went there many times. You've got a huge contribution to make, and I think Samuel's absolutely right, and I would encourage you to be a source of push back against this kind of thing. I remember once talking in Russia, actually in Siberia, to an academic about the difference between the east East and the west, and he said, in the both parts of the world you've got materialism, you've got the material, we haven't, but it's the same philosophy, and that's the tragedy. The stuff that you were taught under Marxism is very a very little distance below the surface of some of the leading intellectuals in the west today; it's the same materialism as a philosophy, but it's mixed with the consumerism that you didn't have in those days. And because you know what it's like to be deprived of many things because of an ideology, the Christian ideology or worldview is much more precious to you because of what it's done, and so you have a huge contribution to make.
Just before we go to a question from the floor, there's just one more that links really well in with what you've just been talking about, John, which is Andre who asks, can you share with us a short short story from your experience before 1990 behind the Iron Curtain that could help our faith? Because this is a fascinating aspect of your life that perhaps not that many people know—that that you moved and and worked among people, you know, in Soviet Russia and so on. Yes. Well, before 1990, I wasn't in Russia; I went there first in in 1989-90. But let me go years before that to East Germany, and I'll tell you one story of a girl called Esther. And she was a very bright girl; she'd been top of her class in school. And I happened to be there—I'm a German speaker; that's why I could move easily in East Germany—and she came home from school weeping her heart out while we were there. And we said, Esther, what's wrong? She said, the teacher has just told me I've got to leave school and go and work in a slipper factory. Now, this girl had been top of her class in every year, but at the age of 13, she was asked to take an oath of public allegiance to the atheistic state, and she said, I'm a Christian; I can't do that. And she was crying, and we were weeping with her, but I said, Esther, what did you say to the teacher? I'll never forget her answer. Said, Uncle John, I said, said to the teacher, sir, one day you will stand before God, and you will answer for what you've done to me this day. I never forgot that; it steeled me to redouble my efforts to fight this ideology for the rest of my life, and that's what I've tried to do with God's help—to fight what is driving the most extreme things on the planet, and one of them is the persecution of the Uighurs. But all this kind of stuff comes from not a rejection of God but a hatred of God, and just that one thing encapsulates it. Wonderful. Let's have a question here.
Many wars are fought in the name of God. If God really cares, why is he allowing these things to happen? And the next is: Even many lives are lost in natural disasters—innocent lives—where is God when all these things happening? Well, thank you. That's the hardest question you can ask; it's the hardest question for anyone of any worldview—the problem of evil and suffering. And I would want really to be fair to your question to have an hour to talk about it at least, because there are no simplistic answers to this, but I'll try and say something briefly. You referred very briefly and concisely to two problems: There's a problem of moral evil—the bad things people do to one another—wars, as we see it horribly these days. Then there's a problem of what's called natural evil, which is a bit of a a misnomer, and that is catastrophes, diseases, cancers, tsunamis, all earthquakes, all that kind of thing. Now, how do we face that? And I I'm going to cut to the middle of that and tell you where I begin to see a possibility. I have no simplistic answer because there isn't one, but there are two ways of looking at it. The person who's suffering sees it in a very different way from say me who's watching the suffering. In other words, cancer looks very different in the eyes of a a young mother who's just been told she's got 6 months to live and in the eyes of the oncologist who's treating her. So there are two different sides, and the person that's watching tends to have a more intellectual response; they're full of big questions. The other person is in utter pain and needs comfort and help and encouragement. Now, how do we face it? Well, I'll tell you how I begin to face it. The way you formulate the question is a very common one, and it's been there for centuries: If there's a good and all-powerful God, how is it that the world is like this? Now, let me look at it from the theoretical perspective first, because I'm afraid I'm a theorist above all, and if you want me to tell you about suffering, just see me in a dentist's. Um, seriously though, many people respond to this and say, therefore there's no God, and many of my friends do, and I've been in Odesa many times, and I've wept every time; it it breaks my heart to see what's going on in a country that I love—in Ukraine; been there many times, all those cities, I know them all. So what, how do we respond? Well, there's no God. Now, people that take that view think they solved the problem; they've got rid of God; that's true, but they've also got rid, by definition, of all hope. The situation for them is totally hopeless, but actually they've got rid of the problem of evil. Now, this is a more serious philosophical point, so if you don't like philosophy, go to sleep, and I'll tell you when to wake up. Um, the whole concept of evil, I believe, is directly related to the existence of God. Dostoevsky, the famous Russian novelist, said once, yes, if God does not exist, everything is permitted. In other words, he didn't mean atheists can't behave; he meant there's no reason for believing in good and evil. And Richard Dawkins says exactly that; he says this universe is just what you'd expect it to be if at bottom there's no good, no evil, no justice—DNA just is, and we dance to its music. That's atheism removing moral concepts, but that doesn't work because Dawkins doesn't even work for him because he knows he's a moral being, and therefore he talks about the problem of evil. So there are many reasons that atheism doesn't work intellectually, but that's not going to help a person who's suffering.
Come now to the other side very briefly. When I was a student, we used to have long discussions: Well, if God is all-powerful and he's all good, and we never solve the problem—never; I've never heard a good answer to the solution. Now, I'm a mathematician, and when mathematicians try for centuries to solve a problem, they usually ask themselves, are we asking the right question? So let me reformulate the question: What are we faced with? A mixed picture; I call it beauty and barbed wire, beauty and bombs. We look out at a starry night; we see the Andromeda galaxy, and the it's absolutely magnificent, and then we turn on the television, and we watch what's happening in Ukraine—beauty and bombs. We all have to face that. Now, how are we going to face that mixed picture? There's beauty; that's a mystery. If everything's evil, how is it that we get like like that? And now I ask myself a question that's just as hard, and it's this: We've all got to grant that it's a mixed picture; is there any evidence anywhere that there's a God that we could trust with it? That's an equally hard question, but I believe that question brings us further, and it takes us directly to the cross because the claim is—and I often say to people, please listen to what Christianity claims before you reject it—the claim is that the one on the cross is God himself—God incarnate. So what, if I I put it bluntly, is God doing on a cross suffering? Well, it certainly means that he hasn't remained distant from our human suffering but but has become part of it; that's the first thing—the heart of God revealed. Now, of course, if that's where it had ended, we'd never have heard of Jesus. The next bit is where the Resurrection comes into central role. I would have no hope; I wouldn't be sitting here trying to answer your question if I didn't believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead, and that's where the hope comes. You see, atheism is a hopeless faith—literally hopeless; there's no hope. Now, where can we get hope? What has the atheist got to say to the young mother with cancer? Nothing. Have I got anything to say as a Christian? I can't promise her that she'd be cured, although I know God has the power to do it, but what I can bring to her is a message of hope that she can have a personal relationship with Christ that will transcend death and have something there to leave her children with. Now, I was in Christchurch, New Zealand, the same week as the earthquake, and I spoke about this, and when I'd finished, a huge audience—one of the biggest that they'd seen in the church for many years—there was a note left from for me from a lady, and it just said, I lost my husband last week, and she said, what you said is the first glimmer of hope I've got—glimmer of hope. And I believe scripture analyzes this very carefully; I haven't time to go into it in detail, sir, but in John 11 there is the story of what happens when people suffer. Lazarus died; the sisters expected Jesus to be there and cure him; he wasn't there. Jesus let the man die, and it nearly brought them to doubt the love of God. And when he eventually came and Lazarus was dead, the sister said, if you had been here, he wouldn't have died. And then he suddenly told Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Now, that whole story, I believe, shows us how this problem on the one side can lead people to doubt the love of God, but how Christ answers it by being the resurrection and the life. My final point is: I've tried to put this together briefly in a little book that circled the world; it's called *Where Is God in a Coronavirus World*, but that'll have to do for that.
Well, thank you so much. I, with apologies to many other people who have wanted to ask a question in person because time is drawing to a close, I'm just going to finish with with a final question from Slido, John, and this is, um, well, I'm going to give you two actually because I think they're substantially the same question, both um, very popular. Someone asks, when Muslim people do what we do, which is believing what they're taught by their parents and carrying on their faith, what makes them wrong and us right? And to sum up that question, someone else asks, how do you prove that Christianity is the true religion and other religions are false? Thanks for that. I'm glad to hear that question because it's it's important. I never try to answer that question without saying this: When we start to talk about the differences between religions, there is huge danger of looking down at other people. Now, it is very important to go back to something that Samuel said in our interview: Every man, woman on the planet is a person of infinite worth, made in the image of God. And often you find that in essence the differences between religions are not moral differences; there are differences in what people believe about how you relate to God. And you will find that many of our Muslim friends and Hindu friends and others have a strong moral code. Why is that? From where I said, it's because they're made in the image of God; their moral beings, and scripture tells us clearly that pagans can sometimes put professed believers in God to shame. Abraham, in particular, the father of faith, and a pagan Egyptian pharaoh had a higher moral standard than he did. Now, it's so important to say that because the moment you start to critique people, think you are assuming you're better than they are morally. We, not my atheist friends, could put me to shame, and you know, Christians have been caught out in all kinds of things. So we need to be very careful that we first recognize that the people we're talking about are made in the image of God and therefore, as creatures of God, have infinite value. Now, once we've said that, we can now come to the next question because there's respect there. The second point is: Well, let me take the three great monotheistic religions, or we'll be here all night—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Now, you could leave Christianity out; Judaism and Islam are not going to agree about well, what is central to Christianity. I might as well bring it in again; think of Jesus or Isa, as Muslims call him, Yeshua, uh, as the Jews call him. My Jewish friends believe that he died and didn't rise; my Muslim friends believe he didn't die; I believe he died and rose. Those three things cannot be simultaneously correct. And when I find I talk about this in public, my Jewish and Muslim friends are not—they agree; they just do not agree on what is central. Now, how are you going to decide it? Well, I know of no other way on a matter of evidence, and then we discuss that, but there's another approach, and that is this, and this is I think uh, the crux of the matter. People often say to me, you know, you're a scientist, and you talk about evidence for God, the universe, and all that's marvelous, but you're a Christian; how do you bridge the gap between belief in God as the god of the universe and a specifically Christian message? Well, I say, let's look at it this way: The heart of Christianity is rather different from what many people expect. And if I am to explain that, I often ask people, I say, first of all, tell me what a religion is; what do you think a religion is? And I come up with a little illustration of it; I often put it to them and say, is your view of religion like this? You've got a ceremony at the beginning, some sort of initiation that puts you on a path, and I usually draw a wavy line—ups and downs—and you stay on the path—the sick full path or whatever whatever it is—the way, etc.—and you've got various people to help you—priests, gurus, imams, all the rest of it—and then you come to a gate at the end where I draw some scales of justice, and at the end you're faced with an assessment of your behavior and your deeds up to that point, and if you pass the grade, you get accepted into whatever it is—nirvana, heaven, or whatever. And most people will tell me that is what we believe, and I say, perhaps the best way to think about it is like a university course. You have an entrance, and then you study at the university. Every university in Britain and around the world works this way; the professors may be the best in the world, but they cannot guarantee you a degree. Why? Because the whole principle of universities is you get a degree on the basis of your merit, and if you don't earn it—merit it—you don't get it. Yes. And many people say, yes, that is religion. I've been told that by hundreds of people. Well, I said, you see, that isn't Christianity. And they say, oh, yes, it is. Now, here where the problem lies: Many people think that Christianity is like that—you pile up your good deeds, you try and please God, and you hope at the end that he won't take his law too seriously and we'll let you in. But you see, it's not like that, folks. Christianity—the acceptance is not at the end of the journey, at the Judgment; it's at the beginning of the journey, at the cross. Now, this is utterly revolutionary in that sense. Christianity is not a religion; it isn't. It certainly has a path and a way, but the path follows acceptance; it doesn't come before it because the unique thing about Christianity is that at the very beginning, what Jesus offers me is that if I repent—that is, turn away from the mess I've made of life and maybe other people's lives, sadly—and trust him as Savior and Lord, who died for me, then he will give me—then right then—the acceptance. That's hugely important. You see, let me give you an illustration. This is so important because I meet dozens of people that don't understand this even in this country. Fifty-six years ago now, nearly, I met a girl; she was lovely, so I decided I'd like to marry her. So I came along, and I gave her a lovely present; it was wrapped up, and I said, Sally, I'd like you to be my wife. Now, here's a present. So she opened it, and it was a cookbook. So I said, read page 153—apple cake—thou shalt take so much flour, thou shalt take so much sugar, thou shalt take, and thou shalt put in the oven, and bacon, so on. Now, I said, my dear, I would like you to take this book, and if you keep these rules—let's say, let's be reasonable—for the next 40 years, then I will accept you; otherwise, you can go back to your mother. Why are you laughing, folks? That is how millions of people think about God. You would never insult a fellow human being—and I mean this very seriously—you would never insult a fellow human being by making acceptance dependent on their performance. Do you think God does that? That's turning God into a monster, and that's why you laughed; it's is ridiculous. Of course, I didn't do that. Now, the amazing thing is she accepted me; it's not amazing that I accepted her, but it's amazing she accepted me. And what does that do? Does that mean she doesn't care about how she lives and how she cooks? Of course not, but she's not cooking to earn my affection; she's cooking because she's got it. And here am I tonight talking to you, interviewing. Why do you think I do it? Do you think I'm doing it to earn brownie points that God will accept me? Not at all. All I'm doing it because I know my acceptance doesn't depend on it, and that's the difference. Now, let me put it this way, so it's really sharp in your minds, and it could help you to explain this to people: Christianity does not compete with any other religion. Why not? Because Jesus offers me something none of them offer me. So it's a no-brainer here to accept from him something that nobody else offers me—nobody else offers me forgiveness on such terms and acceptance and love at the very beginning, under a relationship. And that's the reason I'm a Christian. Thank you. [Applause]